Friday, July 2, 2010

Back after 2 weeks

I'm back after missing stewardship for a couple of weeks. There's been quite a bit of rain so the wetland actually looks like one.

One of the plants now flowering along the edge of the pond is Swamp Milkweed. It's a herbaceous plant native to North America. Like most other milkweed, it has sap containing toxic chemicals that repels insects and herbivorous animals. It is found growing wild near the edges of ponds and is one of the plants that attract the Monarch Butterfly.

Swamp Milkweed

Once again this week, we headed to Chester Spring Marsh to continue removing invasives. The site was also very wet and there were a lot of mosquitoes. I found a huge patch of stinging nettle and I spent the best part of an hour removing it.

The grey area shows the level of water that covered the site after the Sunday night storm. The area is very muddy.